Unmade
by Ice Queen1
Summary: Neal's been missing. Now that they've found him, he's not quite the same. One shot, kinda odd. Rating for f word and mentions of drugs.


Author's Note: Okay, this is a little off the beaten path for me…this is all based off some weird dream I had, and the only part that sticks in my mind is Neal waving a gun around screaming "Unmake me!" Do I know what that means? Hell, no I don't. But I thought I would write it down, so the image can torture someone besides me. It's vague, and probably a one shot, but how they all wound up here will be left pretty much to your imaginations. Watch out for the F-bomb. And yes, Neal is supposed to be out of character.

PS Note: I also have no spell check, so…oops?

"Peter, we found him," Diana Barrigan's voice crackled over the earwig. "He's on the top floor."

"Is he okay?" Peter Burke asked, already on his way from his position on the first floor of the near abandoned building.

There was a beat of uncomfortable silence before Clinton Jones replied for her. "Not really, Boss. You might want to hurry."

Peter was already double timing up the stairwell, but those few words urged him faster, barely noticing he'd already climbed three floors.

On the top floor, three other agents besides Jones and Diana were outside the doorway to the apartment inside, all similarly dressed in kevlar clearly announcing them as FBI, and all with their eyes riveted on the door.

All of them had their guns drawn, though a few looked unsure what to do with them.

"Where's Neal?" Peter asked, panting a little from taking the stairs as fast as he had.

Diana and Jones looked to each other before Diana tilted her head towards the door. "He's in there, Boss. But he's high as a kite from something, and he's got a gun. We didn't want to shoot him, and we didn't want to catch one ourselves. You're the only one we figured he would let close enough to take the gun from him."

"What do you mean, he's flying high?" Peter demanded. He tried to peer past the other agents outside the door, but couldn't see through crack in the door.

"They must of given him something before we got here, but he's muttering to himself, pacing rapidly at one end of the room, he doesn't seem to be able to focus, and when we tried to enter the room, he freaked out and told us to get back or he'd shoot," Jones explained.

"Do you know where he got the gun?" Peter asked. "Is there anyone in there with him?"

Diana and Jones both shook their heads.

"We didn't get a chance to investigte the whole room, we backed out when he started waving the gun. But if there is someone else in there, we can't see them, and Neal isn't paying any attention to anything except the door."

Peter scrubbed a weary hand over his face. "All right, I'm going in. But if it looks like he's going to shoot me…"

"Shoot him first?" Jones supplied.

Peter shot him a look that clearly said _Really?_ "Just incapacitate him. Wing him or something. Just don't kill him."

"Right, Boss."

Peter pushed past the other agents and slowly poked his head around the cracked door.

Neal was on the other side of the room against the far wall, pacing irritably from one end to the other, one hand tugging on his own hair and the other holding a sig, absently tapping it against his thigh as he walked, muttering to himself.

Peter slid in through the doorway, keeping his own gun down so as not to freak Neal out even more. God knows what the hell he was tripping on, or how he'd react to another gun. And given his skill with a rifle, Peter had no intention of seeing his skills again with a pistol.

"Neal?" he called cautiously. Carefully neutral.

At first, the younger man didn't seem to hear him, and Peter opened his mouth to ask again when Neal suddenly spoke.

"I can see you and hear you just fine from there," Neal said. It didn't sound like him though. It was short, clipped and rushed, and his head jerked slightly as he spoke.

"Neal, we're just here to take you home," Peter said calmly. "We just want to take you to a doctor first."

Neal didn't react very well to that. He stopped pacing entirely, his head jerking up to look at Peter for the first time, and Peter's stomach dropped. The con artist looked like he didn't go peacefully with the people who'd brought him here. One eye was thoroughly blackened, the bruise spreading from his eye almost back to his hairline, the blood vessels in his eye in bright crimson splotches from where they'd burst. His other eye was bloodshot, the pupil dilated so far that the blue was almost gone. His normally well kept hair was mussed and sticking out in odd angles where he'd been absently pulling on it. Neal was paler than usual, and fine tremors shook his usually confident frame. His hand with the gun twitched spasmodically at his side. A set of handcuffs dangled from one wrist, and Peter felt a sudden flair of pride that no matter what state he was in, Neal could still escape them.

"What do you care?" he demanded.

"Neal, I'm your friend," Peter said. "Of course I care."

Neal stared at him for a moment, a look of disbelief crossing his face before he settled on anger. "We're not friends. We're not even coworkers. You're my keeper. You don't even keep me. You're trying to destroy me. Unmake me."

Now it was Peter's turn to be lost. "Unmake you?"

"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG IT TOOK ME TO GET LIKE THIS!" Neal suddenly shouted, his gun coming up to point directly at Peter's head.

"_Stand down_," he hissed over the mic, raising his hands to prove he had no weapon.

"Any _fucking_ clue?" Neal continued. "You want me to to undo everything I've ever done, everything I've become. You want me to fade!"

"No, Neal, I don't want to do anything like that," Peter said, taking a cautious step back so Neal didn't think he was crowding him.

"Yes, you _do_. You think I can't tell? You think I can't see?"

The hand that was previously twitching uncontrollably was now disturbingly still as he kept the gun raised.

"You hate what I am!" Neal protested. "You hate me until you need me! Make me dance like a fucking puppet on a string. You want to make me better, like I'm a disease!"

"That is _not_ true, Neal, and you know it. It was your idea to come work with us, remember?" Peter said.

"One prison for another. It seemed like a fair trade. At least this one doesn't have bars," Neal snapped. "Just a collar and a leash."

And as quickly as the rage came, it was gone again, and Neal looked tired, his red eyes blinking rapidly in the sparse daylight.

"I know I'm starting to fade," Neal whispered. He dropped the gun again to his side, and the limb promptly started tapping against his thigh. "I wonder what you think of me. And I try not to be me anymore. I really do. But it's hard to let go of everything and hope everything doesn't fade away with you."

In a very disturbing sense, Neal was actually starting to _make_ sense to Peter.

"Why do I want to make you proud, Peter…" Neal asked, sounding very, very lost. "Your proud of me when I do bad things but only when I do them for you. You like to show off that I can be better than everyone else at being bad. And then you yell at me for it. I never know what to do."

Neal's head twitched violently, snapping almost completely to one side as if he'd been punched, and Peter winced as he could hear the vertebrae snap.

"Neal," Peter began, waiting until the man looked at him. He paused for a moment, before pulling his earpiece out. What he had to say to Neal was nobody's business but his own. "I don't want you to stop being who you are. You're brilliant. One of the smartest guys I've ever worked with. But it's what you do with your intelligence that defines you. You never stole or cheated from people that didn't deserve it on some level. Most of them were already criminals themselves, or had insurance to cover the loss. You went out of your way to try and create victimless crimes. You liked to flaunt that you were better than everyone else, in every way you could. But they were still crimes, Neal. And what you considered justice was still against the law."

Neal shook his head, his free hand winding its way back to his hair to start tugging on it again. "I don't want to be collared anymore. I don't want chains keeping me from running. I want to stay...but I have to go," Neal whispered.

"No, Neal, listen to me. You don't have to go," Peter said. Neal slowly lifted the gun again, and for a moment, Peter wasn't sure what exactly he planned on doing with it. But then, as he watched Neal's face, there was a fleeting moment of clarity, as if for the first time in the entire conversation, he was aware of his surroundings. Abruptly, he dropped the gun.

"Unmake me," Neal said, barely a whisper. It was a desperate plea, as if the very idea caused him pain. "Unmake me so I can stay."

This was why Peter was glad he didn't have children. How did you answer something like that?

And suddenly Neal was going down. The drugs and exhaustion finally made themselves known and Neal stumbled momentarily, before crumbling to his knees, both hands fisting in his hair. "Unmake me, UNMAKE ME!" he screamed, rocking forwards and Peter rushed forwards towards him, shoving the mic back in his ear.

"Clear!" he called to the team. "It's okay! Someone call a paramedic, NOW!"

He vaguely heard Jones call down the stairwell to the already waiting ambulance. But his whole focus was on his partner.

Peter kneeled next to Neal as the younger man shook uncontrollably, deep, wrenching sobs barely muffled against the carpeting. All the while desperately pleading "_unmake me, unmake me so I can stay_."

"Shh," Peter said, completely out of his depth when it came to comforting people other than his wife. "It's going to be okay, Neal. Everything will be fine." He reached out a hand to gently touch the other man's curved shoulder.

Neal unexpectedly leaned towards the comforting touch, slumping literally onto Peter's lap, his fingers fisting into his lower pant leg.

"Peter, don't make me go," Neal whispered, tears still leaking from the corners of his bright blue eyes. "Please…_let me stay_."

Peter was quiet for a moment, and he heard the EMT's entering the scene, asking the other agents what was going on. "Neal, you'll hopefully won't remember any of this…but you're _home_ Neal. And you can always stay."

WCWCWC

Sooo…yeah. Not exactly planned out or really conceived in any normal meaning of the word. But hey. Dreams do that to you. And yes…it really did look like this. I don't know what kind of an identity problem Neal is having, but I'm guessing he's going to eventually have to reconcile the fact that he can't be the person he used to be anymore. He's going to have to become someone else. Thoughts and opinions always welcome! They're like cookies! Or mail, to us poor military people abroad.


End file.
